Monday, June 24, 2013

BROADCASTING NON-VIOLENCE

All India Radio preserves MK Gandhi’s first and only appearance on the radio and remembers the day of his assassination.

On June 25, 1934, the first of several attempts were made on his life in Pune

It was November 12, 1947, when Mahatma Gandhi was coming to All India Radio studios for the first time. He was to make an address live over radio to more than two lakh refugees from Pakistan gathered at a camp in Kurukeshtra, 177 kms Northwest of Delhi. A special address for Gandhi was organised by AIR from its studios where an ambience of a prayer meeting was created. A report on this event published in the issue of' 'The Indian Listener' of February 22, 1948, after Gandhi's death, reads, “A special studio was fitted with the 'takhposh' (low wooden settee) which was daily used by him for his prayer meeting addresses at Birla House.” Appropriately, the prayer meeting atmosphere was created in the studio. MK Gandhi arrived at 3.30 pm in the Broadcasting House accompanied by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. On reaching the studios Gandhi said about radio, “It is a wondrous thing. In it I see Shakti; the miraculous power of God.”